The Lost Island

by Douglas Preston

  “No vamos isla,” he said, wagging his finger like a schoolmaster. “No.”

  Gideon took a deep breath. “Porque?”

  “Isla…peligroso.”

  Peligroso. What the hell did that mean? Once again Gideon found himself rummaging around his brain for his high school Spanish. “Peligroso? No comprende.”

  “Peligroso! Malo! Difícil!”

  Difficult. He got that last word at least. Problem was, the chief’s Spanish didn’t seem much better than his own.

  “Vamos in canoa.” Gideon made rowing motions.

  “No. Isla sagrada.”

  Sagrada. Another damn word he didn’t know. He turned to Amy. “Help me out here. You know Latin. What the hell is sagrada?”

  “It sounds a lot like sacra. Sacred. And peligroso sounds a lot like periculosum. Dangerous.”

  “So the island is sacred and dangerous. But they must go there, or how else would they get the lotus?” Gideon turned back to the chief. “Cuando…” He pointed at the chief and pantomimed the rest of the question. When do you go to the island? After a few false starts, the chief finally seemed to understand. With broken Spanish and much gesturing, he conveyed the general impression that they went there for some sort of ceremony of thankfulness.

  “Gracias,” said Gideon.

  The chief left, and Gideon motioned to Amy. “Let’s go for a walk on the beach.”

  They walked through the brush and came out on the broad beach. There were the canoes, still pulled up on the sand.

  “Maybe we should steal a canoe,” said Amy.

  “We’d never survive. Just launching a canoe in that surf requires incredible skill—someone who knows exactly what he’s doing.”

  “So what are we going to do?”

  “We’ll take a page from your old friend Odysseus.”

  “Like what? Poke a stick in iPhone’s eye?”

  “No. I’m talking about some good old-fashioned social engineering.”

  “How?”

  Gideon explained his idea. He would feign sickness, which would require them to administer the lotus to him. He would be healed, and then they would have to have the ceremony of thankfulness.

  Amy stared at him. “Gideon, that’s a terrible idea. How do you know the lotus isn’t poisonous?”

  “One can only hope.”

  “Hope, right. And how do you know this is a thanksgiving ceremony? That old man’s mumbling and gestures could have been describing anything.”

  “You saw him putting his hands together and bowing. Looked like thankfulness to me. And anyway…I want to try the lotus.”

  She looked at him curiously. “Why?”

  “Just to see.”

  “See what?”

  Gideon fell silent.

  They spent the next half hour discussing other ways to persuade the natives to take them to the island. But they kept coming around to the one, intractable problem: they went to the island only for the ceremony. Finally Amy gave in. “But I’ll only agree if you promise me one thing: I take the lotus.”

  More arguing, but Amy was adamant.

  They returned to camp and sat down around the fire again. While Gideon messed with the medical kit, Amy ate a second breakfast—another bowl of thick maize pudding and mashed plantains. It almost made Gideon sick just watching her cram so much food in her mouth. She gestured for a coconut to wash it down. iPhone brought one to her, hacking off the top with an expert swipe of a machete and gouging a hole for her to drink from. She drank and passed it to Gideon, who drank and set it beside himself. Surreptitiously, when no one was watching, he took a small bottle of ipecac he had palmed from their medical kit and poured the contents into the coconut.

  Amy called for coconut milk and he passed it back to her. With a knowing glance at him, she drank deep.

  And immediately began vomiting.

  Everyone leapt up in horror as she continued retching and heaving, bringing up her enormous breakfast. As she puked, she hammed it up, writhing on the ground and shrieking between bouts of the heaves.

  The effect was electrifying. While Gideon rushed over and made a show of trying to help her, at least half the settlement fled into the jungle in a noisy panic, taking with them the children. The chief came over, followed, very reluctantly, by iPhone.

  “I’m dying!” Amy shrieked. “Dying!”

  “Muerte!” Gideon cried, dredging up another Spanish word from his schooldays. The dry heaves had passed—ipecac was very short acting—but she continued to scream, rolling her eyes, clawing the sand, and feigning convulsions. It was so hideous that even Gideon felt his gorge rise. Most of the rest of the village edged farther away, with more fleeing into the jungle.

  But the chief and iPhone bravely stayed put, trying to help her. The chief started chanting and laying on hands while iPhone attempted to hold her down.

  Gideon pulled the carved wooden box out of his drysack, opened the lid, and took out the lotus. “Give her this!”

  This suggestion was greeted with a cry of instant approbation. The chief leapt up and fetched some boiling water from the fire, while iPhone whipped out his machete and began mashing and chopping the pod into tiny pieces, then crushing them with the flat of the blade. A foul scent rose from the crushed plant and Gideon had a bad moment, thinking it might be poisonous. But they didn’t look like poisoners and were clearly concerned with her illness. When iPhone had reduced it almost to a powder, it went into the pot of boiling water.

  Amy screamed one last time, and then—with a final rolling of the eyes—flopped out, unconscious.

  The chief and iPhone worked frantically, boiling the lotus in the water, then straining it through a piece of pounded bark. A bad-smelling rose-colored liquid resulted, which they cooled with some fresh water. Talking rapidly, they gestured to Gideon to prop Amy up so she could drink. Gideon managed to get her up, her head lolling back, spittle drooling from her lips. He couldn’t believe what a good actress she was.

  The chief, carrying a coconut cup with the foul beverage, knelt in front of her and gave her a couple of hard slaps. Her eyes flew open. He put the cup to her mouth. Making a face, she drank down the concoction.

  She fell back, once again unconscious. Gideon eased her down.

  A minute passed while she lay motionless. The tension and anxiety from the chief and iPhone were palpable. They stood over her, wringing their hands, their faces distorted with worry.

  And then, suddenly, Amy opened her eyes and looked around a little groggily.

  A great cry went up from the chief and iPhone. The others who had retreated to the edge of the jungle now shuffled forward to see what was happening.

  Amy raised herself onto her elbows and glanced up at the onlookers, blinking.

  More hubbub and excitement. People were still hanging back, but the relief was tremendous.

  Slowly, gingerly, Amy rose to her feet. The retching and convulsions had passed. She thanked first the chief, then iPhone. People began to crowd around. Amy looked awfully tired, swaying slightly on her feet, but nobody seemed to notice as they came back out of the bush, eyes wide in wonderment at the miracle, making a great noise of thankfulness, gesturing to the sky as if praising the gods.

  And then the chief seized Gideon’s hand and raised it in triumph. He gave another incomprehensible speech that seemed to be full of praise for Gideon and his wisdom. At least, that’s what Gideon hoped it meant—since that had been his intention all along.

  Clapping his hands, the chief began calling out instructions. The village children began chasing around a goat, finally capturing it and tying it up. iPhone came over with his machete and, to the sound of much horrible bleating, cut its throat.

  The chief was beaming. He clapped again. “Fiesta!” he said.

  “Fiesta,” murmured Amy, as if from a long way away. “Fiesta.”

  As they prepared the feast, Gideon took Amy down to the beach to clean off the dirt and flecks of vomit. That evening, at the feast around the
fire, they consumed barbecued goat. The chief made what seemed like an important announcement, greeted with applause. After much questioning, Gideon was able to decode it. It was exactly what he’d hoped: The next morning, they would be making the journey to the island of Tawaia, apparently to give thanks to the gods of healing and to the spirit of the lotus.

  After the feast, late that night, Gideon and Amy finally were able to retreat to the darkness of their hut. Gideon lay down on his mat, his hands behind his head. For a while they lay in silence, Gideon listening to the distant sound of the surf and the murmuring of voices around the fire.

  “Amy, your performance was amazing.”

  A quiet snore. Amy, it seemed, was still under the influence of the lotus flower. It had seemed to take her every effort to remain awake during the feast.

  “Amy?”

  “Mmm?”

  “You were horrifyingly effective. It scared the shit out of everyone—including me.”

  A long pause before the bleary response came. “Long ago, at a very foolish time in my life, I studied Method acting.”

  “Ah! A clue to the real Amy finally emerges. You put it to good use.”

  “Your idea.” And Amy began to breathe softly again.

  Gideon looked over. Every other time he’d seen Amy asleep, there had been a frown on her face. It was as if she was forever struggling with something—what, he could not imagine. Now, however, there was a smile on her sleeping face: a smile that practically radiated serenity and bliss.

  44

  THEY PUT GIDEON in the bottom of one of the canoes and Amy in the other. Gideon made sure to bring their drysacks with them. The men ran them into the water, leapt in, and began paddling like mad as the canoes shot out into the surf, bashing through the breaking waves. Gideon was instantly soaked and thoroughly terrified by the time they reached calmer water beyond the break.

  Even beyond the breakers it was a nerve-racking journey. The sea was running high, the long canoe riding up and down the great swells while the men, their bare, muscled backs glistening with drops of water, paddled in unison to a rhythmic chant. The wind blew straight into their faces but the canoes moved fast, cutting through the water at five miles an hour. The early-morning sun rose over the distant islands, throwing a brilliant golden light over the sea, limning the mountain peaks in purple.

  The landforms slowly rose up as they approached. Gideon could make out three of them. A massive, initial island thrust steeply out of the sea, rising more than a thousand feet into the clouds. A smaller but even steeper and taller island lay beyond it. Right in front of them was the twisted place: a volcanic sea stack or eroded plug that stuck up like a witch’s finger, a black, bent spire of rock.

  They headed for the closer island, just behind the twisted stack. As they approached, Gideon could see the white cream of surf, and beyond it a narrow beach of black sand, ending in steep volcanic cliffs hung with vegetation and pierced by caves.

  The two canoes raced into the surf and were carried through the breakers and into the calm water beyond before grounding on the sand. The men leapt out and hauled the canoes up beyond the high-water mark.

  They had arrived. Gideon watched as Amy came over. The men were busy securing the canoes.

  “Feels like the lost world,” said Amy, looking around.

  The others approached, led by a strange, wizened old man whom Gideon hadn’t seen prior to the canoe journey. He was wearing only traditional garb, not the Western clothing of the others, and he carried a tall staff topped by a carved eagle and other, fanciful creatures. His fingers had multiple rings; a dozen heavy necklaces circled his neck. The other men treated him with great deference, casting their eyes to the ground as he walked past.

  Now the man walked up to them and stopped, looking at them both. His wrinkled, craggy face, pendulous lips, and gleaming black eyes gave him the air of a man of mystery and power. This man, Gideon thought, must be a spiritual leader or head shaman.

  After examining them intently, in dead silence, he gestured to iPhone, who seemed to have become their companion and general factotum. iPhone bustled over, and the man spoke to him.

  iPhone turned toward Amy. Gesturing and pointing, and offering the odd Spanish word or two, he communicated that she was to stay with him—she would be separated from the rest. The ceremony was not for her.

  Amy began to protest, but Gideon made a calming gesture. “Go with the flow,” he said. “We’ll have our chance to explore later.”

  Glaring at him, she nodded. iPhone led her away down the beach, and they were soon gone.

  In complete silence, the priest raised his staff as the other men fell in line. He positioned Gideon to walk directly behind him. They proceeded in solemn fashion down the beach for a few hundred yards until they came to a crevasse in the volcanic walls, with the faintest of trails heading up. The priest began to climb, Gideon following with the rest. For an old man the priest was remarkably spry, and Gideon had trouble keeping up with him.

  As they gained altitude, tremendous vistas opened up—the great expanse of sea, the waves thundering on the beach far below, and the distant mainland, like a blue-green sea of its own, flat along the shore but rising into steep mountains farther inland. A pair of eagles, disturbed from some nesting place in the cliffs around them, wheeled about over their heads, their cries piercing the air.

  Gideon looked everywhere but could see no plant that produced pods or buds that resembled the lotus. He wanted to ask about it but decided it was better to go slowly and see how things developed. He sensed the great solemnity of the moment and was intimidated by the silence of the men.

  The trail grew steeper. The priest continued on, climbing with both hands, his staff now tied to his back. Gideon had to push back against his own fear of heights as dizzying spaces opened up below. Still the eagles circled and cried.

  And then, abruptly, the trail came over the lip of a broad ledge. Gideon was so relieved to be away from the cliff that he almost collapsed in gratitude. The other men came up and the priest led them along the broad ledge, around a column of basalt—to the mouth of a large cave. Huge, ancient flowering bushes hung down from its ragged upper edge like so many green scalp locks, in some places almost obscuring the entrance.

  But there was no more time for speculation, because the others were already silently filing in.

  Inside, the cave was low-ceilinged, with a smooth, sandy floor. They walked about a hundred feet in and paused. Gradually, as Gideon’s eyes became used to the darkness, he saw that strange pictographs in deep red and blue were painted on the walls. Several men now fetched brands from a pile leaning against the wall and, with an expert striking of flints, lit them ablaze. They continued deeper into the cave.

  Gideon’s breath quickened when he saw, just ahead, a massive black rock that seemed to be some kind of altar—and painted on a slab behind it was an ancient pictograph, faded by time, depicting the grotesque figure of a monster being, covered with hair, with enormous muscled arms, jutting chin, huge knobby feet—and a single, gigantic eye in the center of its face, surmounted by a massive brow.

  He turned to ask the priest a question about it, but the priest gave him a blazingly hostile gaze and made a gesture of silence before he could speak.

  Brands burning, they approached the altar, the men fanning out. The priest walked up to it and—so suddenly it startled Gideon—broke out into a loud, nasal chant, which was answered by the men, repeated by the priest, and answered again, in a call and response. The cave echoed with the strange sounds of their half-singing, half-spoken voices. This, Gideon reasoned, must be the beginning of the ceremony of thanksgiving.

  The men planted their brands to form a circle around the flat altar. Only then did Gideon notice that the altar was actually a box, with a stone lid. The men moved forward in unison and, still chanting, removed the lid.

  A foul odor wafted out. Similar to the lotus, only much, much stronger.

  The chanting accelerat
ed as the priest reached in and removed what looked to Gideon like a bundle of small, black, twisted cheroot cigars. He counted out several, carried one to Gideon and placed it in his hand; the rest he solemnly distributed to the others, keeping the final one for himself.

  Gideon stared at the thing. It looked like a dried root of some kind, or perhaps a fungus. The smell was fearful, like a combination of dirty feet and bitter almonds.

  They retreated to the sand before the altar, sitting down cross-legged. The priest slid the stone lid back into place while several men fetched wood out of a stack in a corner of the cave and set up a bonfire. When it was done the priest set fire to it with his brand. The flames leapt up, filling the cave with flickering light.

  In the firelight, Gideon could see things even more clearly. The altar was beautifully polished—gleaming like black ebony—the depiction of the creature behind disturbing in its detail, despite the stylized, geometric nature of the design.

  One man went around, placing a polished, flat stone in front of each person, upon which he placed a mortar and pestle carved of lava, along with a stone cup full of water. The priest took up a position at the head of the circle, sitting on a raised stone, and lifted his implements as if to have them blessed. The others did likewise, and Gideon followed suit.

  The head priest then poured a little water into the mortar, broke off a piece of the root, dropped it in, and began grinding it, all the while keeping up a rhythmic chant. The others did the same and so did Gideon, pounding and grinding, making a mush. A foul smell arose.

  When the fungus-thing was completely turned into a kind of gruel, the priest lifted the stone cup to his lips and drank deeply. The others did the same and Gideon, hesitating, at last followed suit. It tasted hideous and it was all he could do to swallow it. Was this the real lotus? What they had given Amy back on the mainland seemed to be a pale comparison to this powerful-smelling root.

  The chanting increased. Gideon wondered what effect the concoction might have. Frightful scenarios out of Carlos Castaneda came to mind. He tried to tell himself that everyone had taken it, so at least it wouldn’t kill him. In his wild youth he’d had more than a little experience with drugs, and he figured that, whatever was in store for him, he’d ride it out. He was reassured that this was a ceremony of thanking the gods. He’d been right after all.